The Best Movie Posters of 2013

There’s an old saying that applies to how we picked our twelve favorite movie posters of 2013: “I may not know art, but I know what I like.”

We don’t look for one or more specific things when deciding which posters we think are the best, but when a poster stands out to us among the more than two thousand submissions each year, we have to include it.

Let’s take a look at all the 2013 movie posters we would proudly hang on our walls…

This poster for 42 – the story of baseball legend Jackie Robinson – does more than just get on base, it hits a home run, too (sorry for the pun).

The beautiful Brooklyn Dodger blue font pops on the clean background, and we really like the untraditional choice of showing Robinson sliding down the side of the poster – as opposed to sliding across the bottom – reminding viewers of what Robinson was famous for…stealing bases.

We have a soft spot for hand-drawn movie posters, which is why we find ourselves pulled toward this one for The To-Do List.

Cartoon-style movie posters are not new in Hollywood and not all them are done well. However, this one manages to give the viewer a lot of details about the movie without actually giving away anything – that’s not a simple task to accomplish.

We wish the poster listed the name of the actual artist so we could give them credit, but sadly, they aren’t mentioned anywhere that we could find.

We really like the oil-on-canvas feel of this Almost in Love poster. The creators did a nice job choosing interesting colors that work well together while standing out at the same time.

This is just a simple, clean concept that studios should attempt more often. Not every poster needs to be jammed packed with characters, scenery and names.

A poster like this could easily hang on the walls of any art gallery and blend right in (minus the wording, of course).

While director Nicolas Refn didn’t quite get the critical accolades for Only God Forgives that he did for Drive, this poster for the movie is just too cool for us to ignore.

Seemingly drawn from the brightly glowing neon signs that dot some of the seedier areas of Bangkok – where Refn’s story is set – this poster also seems to be partially inspired by Rizon Parein’s neon sign posters for Drive.

When done properly, neon signs are beautiful to look at, and a neon sign version of this poster hanging on our walls would please us greatly.

Several posters for horror movies made it into our top 12 this year, beginning with this creepy and hauntingly beautiful poster for The Conjuring.

Looking at this poster, the viewer can determine several things:

1. Bad things have or will happen in that house.

2. Someone hanged themselves in that tree….and OMG THERE SHE IS!

Posters rarely do a good job of representing exactly how creepy a horror movie might be, but we think this one accomplishes the goal nicely.

While Guillermo del Toro’s giant monster flick Pacific Rim wasn’t the domestic box office hit Warner Bros had hoped, this poster still makes us excited to see all the robot-on-monster action the movie has to offer.

As with most summer blockbuster movies, the studio released dozens of posters promoting this film, but this one – with artwork by artist Sergio Grisanti – is hands down our favorite.

It reminds us of a day when classic Saturday morning cartoons like Tranzor-Z and Voltron dominated the airwaves and makes us want to watch the movie all over again.

Another horror/thriller movie poster making it onto our list this year is this interesting one for You’re Next.

Without giving too much away, the poster shows the viewer the following: there are three assailants, six victims, they’ll all be in a house and an oddly-shaped fox mask is involved. Choosing to place the architectural plans of a house inside the mask was a smart move by the poster’s creator and we like it a lot.

Honestly, that’s enough to pique our interest in the film without ever watching the trailer.

Unlike the cluttered and confused mess of a poster that was Thor: The Dark World, this poster keeps things simple, stoic and cool.

In our opinion, this would have looked better with no text – just the image of Superman shooting into the sky and the iconic red “S” under him – but we’re sure for marketing reasons, that wasn’t possible.

You may notice some similarities between this poster for Iron Man 3 and the Man of Steel one listed in the previous slide.

Both feature images of the lead character streaking upward, but this one does it without all the extra text. It’s essentially the only reason why we placed it higher than Man of Steel.

The movie may have been divisive among fans – some people love the twist, some people hate it – but for us, this poster is all “hit.”

Just looking at this poster for The Last Exorcism Part II creeps us out in an nightmare-inducing way – and that’s why it lands so high on our list.

Unlike the subtle imagery used in The Conjuring poster, the creators for this poster went with a clever and much more horrific image to promote this film – and it works astonishingly well.

Most of the posters released to promote the apocalyptic, zombie-themed World War Z were bland and generic shots featuring star Brad Pitt staring in disbelief at the destruction before him – until this one.

This poster reached out and grabbed our attention in a way the others didn’t – so much so that we decided to make it number two on our list.

Like most of the other posters we’ve highlighted, the creators make good use of simply imagery to express what the movie is about – mayhem, destruction and, of course, zombies.

In 2011, we placed two posters for X-Men: First Class at the “top” of our Worst List because they were an uninspired, horrible mess. Now, only two years later, X-Men: Days of Future Past tops our Best List – and it’s well-deserved.

Blending two actors whose ages are separated by nearly 40 years (Michael Fassbender is 36, Ian McKellen is 74) is a difficult feat to pull off, but to do it this well is extraordinary. Every single element of overlap is seamless – down to the lips, ear and even hairline.

There’s no question in our minds that it’s the best poster this year.

We had several other posters this year that were excellent but just barely missed the cutoff for being in the top 12.